The Dave & Kimmer Show

Well, I'm calling it early. The last day of May had a way better summer vibe than these last days of June. I will admit, though, that it's only this last week during which summer lost its mojo. Otherwise this was one heck of a summer month. Three quarters of one heck of a summer month.🙂

For us, June began with a quest: attend Kimmer's nephew's graduation ceremony as he launches outta high school with the Class of 2026.

With that in mind, we hopped a flight from our favorite airport, the one that's just fifteen minutes from our front door. We managed to arrive at the gate about a half hour before boarding and so were able to treat ourselves to a quiet and peaceful half hour in comfy chairs set in front of ceiling to floor windows.

Paine Field.

Landing at Santa Ana International, we leaned into that vibe and chose not to go anywhere.

Wait.

Aren't you traveling?

Sure we are. But traveling doesn't mean taking sequential steps at breakneck speed in perpetuity. It's go and stop. It's braking. It's hitting the gas. It's being on the move. It's relaxing in the moment.

And this was one such moment.

Why?

Because Kimmer's nephew was with friends. Her cousin was at work. So until at least one of those facts brought us within each other's orbit, our time was our own. And, after collecting our luggage from baggage claim, we spied a lovely little oasis at which we could make ourselves comfortable until we decided to be on the move again.

😊

That night, we caught up with Kimmer's cousin at The Lazy Dog for a wall to wall red meat dinner and then caught up with her nephew back at the house.

The next day was a bit of overdue work from a previous trip featuring a drive out to Kimmer's aunt and uncle's old place on the way to the desert. They've been gone nearly two years now and their property is being managed by "the kids".

Kimmer. And her cousin.

It was actually another peaceful day even though there was more physical effort we invested into it. That effort was still part of a schedule of our own making. So. No fire drills. No emergencies. No immediate deadlines. Just getting things done in a paceful way....

...one after the next from a morning drive to a desert home to organizing some of the possessions of Kimmer's aunt, to getting an antique wooden trunk ready for transport back to Kimmer's nephew...

...to simply marveling at many of the photographs we uncovered. Deep family history like this contrast of Kimmer's aunt as a young girl and a young woman.

The next day, Thursday June 4, we're all at the main event being held at Bren Events Center at the University of California, Irvine. Now, it's been a minute since I attended a graduation from end to end. But I managed to enjoy the show, as it were. The traditions. The student and faculty speakers. The inherent people watching exercise of observing students and family in the moment of accepting their high school diploma. Of the event's crescendo when these kids are officially pronounced graduated. The Class of 2026.

Afterward was the chaos of families finding their graduates in the courtyard outside. It was perhaps even more the main event of the afternoon with well wishes and congratulations all around on this perfectly sunny and warm summer's day in and around a wooded grove. It was joy. It was celebration. It was the end of an era. 😕

I will say this, though: I snapped probably one of the best family photos of these three for our own photo album. 😊

A coupla days later, we're over at a friend's lovely home to enjoy our last day here. To partake in fine wines and excellent foods. To simply indulge the moment and each other's company. Equal parts peace and laughter and curiosity.

I definitely could get used to this. ☺️

From a lovely afternoon with friends... directly to the airport and our ride back to the PNW, we pause at the airport sidewalk for one last family tradition...

...before rejoining our home and professional lives in progress.

Okay.

So we're back, late night, Saturday the 6th. And because of our schedule, we missed this:

Yup. Linzy's Dream Patrol performed in the center of the South Gate Roller Rink on Friday night, the night before our return... so we completely missed it.

😭😭😭

A fantastic time was had by all, though. And Dream Patrol got some great exposure to a new audience that thoroughly appreciated the show.

😁😁😁

Now before I said it's been a minute since I sat end to end through a graduation ceremony. I have, though, spent every year around this time of year creating content for the University of Washington's graduation ceremonies and the one-hour live show that leads into it called Purple Carpet.

Last year, I was invited to sit in on the read-through of the Purple Carpet script. It was an informative experience and so I sat in again this year when it was a really FUNNY experience as all the interview answers were made up on the fly by production crew members put on the spot by the reporters. If this was a party game, it'd be called "Just Answer The Question". Totally loved it. 🤣

By the way, Purple Carpet has a studio location six floors up as well as random locations in the stadium. From the studio location, you get one heckuva view of, well, everything. 😊

So now we're into the weekend after the weekend we returned from attending Kimmer's nephew's high school graduation. Now it's the following Sunday and I'm attending the UW Bothell 2026 Graduation Purple Ceremony.

Why?

Because I did a coupla things for it and I wanted to see them in person. I also thought it would be rude to just dip in and out of my contributions so I arrived a half hour early for a quick tour then found a place to be in the arena. My work for the event wound up being bookends, with the student gratitude videos up front... and the fireworks down at the end.

Wait. Fireworks?

Check out the sign below right I came across while wandering the second level before the event:

I believe this was the first warning attached to my work.

"This event concludes with flashing lights and strobe effects that may affect guests with photosensitivity or light sensitivity. Please speak with event staff if you need assistance or an alternate viewing location."

You can catch what the fuss is about in the following video...

🤯🤯🤯

Good grief I loved that experience. It was exactly what I imagined and crafted... but it's rewarding as hell to hear and feel the audience react as intended.

It really was the cherry on top.

😊

A few days later...

We're relaxing at The Cottage in Bothell where we're emersed in that summer vibe...

That first song, by the way, is one that Linzy knows is one of my favorites. So we always catch each other's gaze briefly during her performance to acknowledge that.

The other's another cover, one of many she's performed as a solo, duo, and with the Harper Joy House Band in 2019. She's always lovely with this music that also happens to embody a lovely summer's evening out.

☺️

Before moving into the home stretch of our June, a coupla things:

The first are simple observations from my parent's new place and what I appreciate about it. The ballerinas, always, of course. Gotta love that fine art. And also a trivet from my 1992 travels for Small World Productions on the shoot for that season's Travels in Europe with Rick Steves. The point of the trivet is to capture the horror I felt once I realized the island of Santorini is basically a remnant of a still active volcano.

Oof.

Also, though, it's sweet my parents kept it after all this time from my childhood home, to my parent's larger home, to the big apartment, to the smaller one they moved into in May.

All this time and they still have it out on display. ☺️

Another thing I wanna point out about June as we're actively on our way out of it is that Kimmer recently finished her written dissertation to enough of a degree that it's now in the hands of each member of her dissertation committee for review.

Notes, basically.

She's about to get a bunch of comments and notes, criticisms and suggestions on what I believe to be sixty some pages of dissertation.

She already went through the notes of the first of her professors... and we've been talking about 'em ever since. Processing. Processing. Processing.

I don't know if this is the home stretch for Kimmer's dissertation... but we're sure at another level from where she's been on her way to defending that dissertation in public in January of 2027.

Dang.

2027.

Okay.

This is a photo from Kimmer's office in Ballard on maybe one of the last days of June summer before summer got switched off to indulge us in "June Gloom". Kimmer was just finishing packing up and I was sitting in one of the armchairs, relaxing, listening to a bit of music, taking in the patterns of sun on the walls. It's a good opportunity to just be. To think a little.

June was definitely a graduation month for me. I spent most of it engaged in either attending one, preparing content for one, and experiencing the work I'd done with the audience for whom I'd intended it.

And so I spent a little time thinking about the future laying beyond these graduation ceremonies. A future that is profoundly beyond our ability to predict even next week its exact form.

However.

What might be true regardless of that unpredictability?

Just this: the human brain comes equipped to seek engagement much like it's wired to seek food when we're hungry. When we engage in meaningful, face-to-face conversation, that very act activates the brain's pleasure pathways, releasing neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. And when we retain strong community connections, those relationships are linked to lower blood pressure, reduced cardiovascular mortality, improved overall immune function, and less cognitive decline. So it turns out that our relationships and how satisfied we are in those relationships has a powerful influence on our health.

From The Harvard Gazette:

"Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives ... Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes."

Okay so May.

Right?

We kicked it off with a bit of summer enjoyment, walking along the lake, enjoying the peace, enjoying the sounds of everyone at the lake, stopping in at Tapster and enjoying drink samples on their patio under a setting sun.

I won't lie. Being present in such moments, fully experiencing them, the feel of the sun and the light breeze, the sound of everyone enjoying this moment, the taste of the drinks, the smell of cooking food, the light and color and scenery all around us, and sharing in all of this together...

Is a thoroughly compelling experience.

I said in previous posts that no month is ever about one thing. It never is.

However.

Because some months are so indellibly stamped by an experience, those months are preserved in our minds as being about that one thing. For example, March was the one with Jordan & Dean. May... was the one in which we helped my parents move. And one of the byproducts of doing that is the discovery of thousands of photographs we either hadn't seen in a long, long time or...

Had never seen at all.

There's definitely serious family history in this treasure trove easily going back to the late 1930s.

There's also that time my folks took us on a family vacation to Disney World where we all stayed in the Animal Kingdom Lodge and Linzy embarked on a quest to accumulate Disney character signatures.

She was really very good at it. ☺️

Dashing back to 1962 in another photo album, I ran across these pictures from my parent's wedding day, honeymoon, and their voyage across the Atlantic to the United States.

Mother's Day was a feature of our May. This Mother's Day we spent in Woodinville at 425 Cellars where Linzy was booked for the affernoon and where the owners were fully generous in sharing with us the different wines they produce.

I stopped by a nearby restaurant to score some bruscetta to accompany our drinks and we had a lovely summer's afternoon enjoying Linzy's performance with the couples and families that had gathered at this time and place, sharing in the same experience. 😊

In the meantime... more photo albums and more photos. This time a photo booth strip with Linzy and my folks in a goofy moment, followed by a moment of a reasonably calm me as a kid sitting with my mom during a family trip to Holland (my first one), and then me, my dad, and my maternal grandmother about to board a boat for a lovely cruise of Amsterdam's canals.

Okay.

So now we come to the part about the moving. Which is the one about how my parents moved from a home with lots of space to a home with less than half that space. And so there were decisions to be made about what to do with anything that would not be making the journey into the new space. The first decision, as it turns out, was the baby grand piano. As in Kimmer always admired that piano from its first appearance in Magnolia and my dad remembered that. So he told her the piano isn't gonna be part of the new space.

Would she like to have it???

The answer, of course, was a full-throated

YES!!!!!!!

And so, with the expert efforts of the team from Pro Piano Move out of Edmonds, my parent's baby grand found its way into our living room where it absolutely looks meant to be. 😊

And yes. Both of us practice on it. I have a few songs I've always been meaning to learn. Kimmer's working on her left hand strength as well as learning specific chords from a book that shows the finger positioning for each one .

And yeah. It's a THICK book. 🙂

Aside from the baby grand, there was a truckload to coordinate and to accomplish. We were there for a solid week clearing out the small stuff then coordinating the medium stuff from the bigger place to the smaller place with the moving company and then, finally, coordinating the big stuff with another moving company both to donations and then to storage. It was one heckuva juggling act with a lot of expert help.

In the end, it all worked out by using every minute and hour available to us, every resource and contact. By the time everything was handled, it was fully dark out, ten at night. Two hours shy of the official deadline.

Gotta love it. 😊

And oh dear God did we sleep hard that very night into the next morning.

You bet we did.

😁

Which brings us to the end of the month...

After a thoroughly exhausting couple May of intense moving and storage activities, we managed to experience the last three Linzy Collins performances of the month, starting with Retreat along the shores of Greenlake.

Of course there's plenty here to love and enjoy. What captured our delight this time around was running across an old high school friend of Linzy's. The last time we saw her was summer of 2025 at the Everett Marina after a Little Lies show on the pier.

Before that?

Oof.

Would've been around the time she and Linzy performed a memorial song that Linzy wrote for a friend/mentor who died in a terrible accident a few weeks before graduation.

Linzy's instinctive reaction was to form her grief into music. Hannah helped her find some of what would inform Linzy's words. And their performance embodied a combination of full-throated grief, deep personality, and comfort in maybe the most authentic and natural way possible.

That song was a release for every single family member, friend, classmate, teacher, anyone who had anything to do with the school and, because of that, bore some part of the geief.

And so that song was a relief that shepherded everyone through and out of that unthinkable moment.

And those terrible feelings.

I won't lie. It is a gift to see these two long passed that and further along in their lives pursuing their futures with such passion.

A coupla nights later we're in Bellevue at our least favorite place to enjoy a Linzy Collins performance. The owner's a lovely lovely gentleman. But his clientele?

They are relentlessly, relentlessly LOUD.

They estsblish the venue as a sports bar as opposed to what it really is: a wine bar.

A wine bar that should reflect the culture and class of its owner but easily manages to do neither.

So yeah. Other than another chance to hang out with Linzy, this evening was a bust. Cacophonous, I think, is the word for our experience.

And then thankfully, thankfully... on the last day of the month, May 31, it's...

Reuben's Brews in Ballard.

Bathed in the light of a setting sun on a summer's day. Adorned with one of the biggest Henry's we've ever seen. Invested with families, couples, and the most kids ever to attend a Linzy Show. In fact, one of the evening's requests came from a little girl whose favorite song of the moment comes from the pop culture hit film, KPOP Demon Hunter, probably one of the biggest animated hits to grace Netflix then graduate to big screens for sing-a-longs. So yeah.

This little girl comes up to Linzy during a song break and makes her request. It really is adorable to watch Linzy interact with such tiny human beings. She granted the request and promised the little girl to do her very best. Which. She. Did. To the absolute delight of the little girl returned to her seat beside her dad.

More than most restaurants, cafes, wine bars, and venues, Reuben's Brews was a very sensory experience. It was people watching. It was feeling sequential moments. It was taste and smell and bathing in the music. 😊

It was the perfect cherry on top, ending the month under a setting summer sun listening to the smooth tones of Linzy Collins in the shadow of an immense Henry painted on a two story wall.

And for all of that? Every single piece of that?

You better believe we're thankful.

Okay so we came out of March, the one we deemed the Month of Jordan & Dean, and into one of our more "normal" months, April. Yeah, our adventure with my nephew and niece was perfectly indelible, so everything after that was...

Actually, when we got back it stopped being Winter. It stopped being dark when we woke up. It stopped being dark when I got home at the end of my days.

It started to be Spring.

And yes. I really really really REALLY appreciated full sunlight at 6pm again. 😊

Of course the true highlights of the season are the cherry blossoms...

That's right. The perfect evidence of Spring is right there in The Quad of my alma mater, The University of Washington, and the blooming of its cherry blossoms. I mean everyone's cherry blossoms in the region were blossoming. It's just iconic at the UW. The space is also packed with visitors, tourists as well as locals, taking selfies with iPhone and Androids, lining up professional photographs with their 35mm cameras and long lenses, posing graduation and wedding photos, and parents showing off the wonder of this white and pink and bark beauty to their children. 😊

Okay so normally this time of year we're camping with family at El Moro Campground at Crystal Cove State Park just north of Laguna Beach.

This time, unfortunately, we got beat out for a spot... so our tradition was not to be this year. Instead, Kimmer flew down to Orange County to spend time with her nephew on the occasion of his birthday. His 18th which is a huge whopping deal. She was there from the 9th through the 14th with me picking her up once again at SeaTac. :-)

In other news, Linzy had another busy month of shows, among which was one at one of our favorite restaurants, Pacha, just a coupla blocks from Green Lake.

The food, coffees, and lattes are lovely, of course, but I love it 'cause there's a VW Bus right tbere amidst the tables and chairs in which you can sit... provided no one else has already claimed it.

On the eleventh of the month, we joined her at The Cottage in Bothell, one of the first restaurants at which she performed on a regular basis during her career. The Cottage definitely supported musicians during the Pandemic. Linzy streamed live from their dining room when diners were prohibited indoors. She streamed live from one of the owner's homes a few miles away to a monitor and speakers in the restaurant when dining was allowed indoors again but live music was prohibited. And since those awkward and dark days, she's been turning up ever since just like it used to be when she started. 😊

On the 16th we joined her at Willows Lodge in the Fireside Lounge where she slipped in some of our favorite songs. Especially when she whips out songs like Pat Benatar's "We Belong".

Now that... is the sign of good upbringing. ;-)

The month of April also featured a lot of shuffling and re-shuffling of our storage units, an effort that never fails to daylight photo albums with pictures we haven't seen in a long, long, looooooooong time. And so we're inevitably distracted by our own curiosities, flipping through page after page after page.

Below on the left, that's my mom, once upon a time. To her right, that's Kimmer's paternal grandfather sitting with her cousin. That's also a once upon a time photograph as her grandfather's long since passed away and her cousin, well...

He's not the punk kid he used to be. ;-)

Below them, center, that's my mom's sister, Ludy, also once upon a time. Bottom left, that's me 'n my dad at a theme park gonna get dropped and, hopefully, the parachute will deploy.

Which it did.

It's why I'm alive to this day. ;-)

Bottom right, that's my old boy choir director, George Fiore, who's usually a suit & tie gentleman... but at camp manages to dress in a way that simply does not make sense. ;-) He was a virtuoso on the pipe organ and the piano. He was choirmaster for the Seattle Opera. :-)

Lastly, but not leastly, this is Kimmer's high school Partner in Crime, Margaret. Many many MANY years downstream of those bad 'ol days, they're in touch again, comparing notes, comparing memories, and generally coordinating their attentions as they continue to move forward and forward and forward in their lives. :-)

I was gonna say "And that's it!" but that wouldn't be appropriate. These are simply highlights. Most are threads that'll find their way into next month and so on. I will say this, though:

By the end of April, we were on the precipice of a MASSIVE moving job.

SUSAN'S BIRTHDAY

You don't have to be old, older, oldest to be walking around this earth bearing the burdens of loss.

The youngest of us walk around carrying the burdens of loss, for crying out loud.

And so it is that over the years we've carried along similarly, reminded in both subtle and not so subtle ways of the puncture wounds left across our lives. The Who's Missing in our lives.

Today it's Susan.

Why?

Because every day it's Susan, she was such a fixture of our lives when she was with us.

Today especially, though. It's her birthday, you see. Because of that, our brains naturally embrace what plans we have for her birthday. Which movie. Which restaurant. How're we all getting there. What time do we start. What time do we need to get her back to the house.

Those are just the thoughts that arise on their own. Automatically. Because her life was threaded through ours and that's just how it goes.

Of course a few beats later our conscious minds kick in to remind us that Susan died four years ago.

God. Is it four years ago now?

Yes.

Yes it is.

So this evening we found ourselves at a brewery in Ballard, enjoying the musical stylings of one Linzy Collins. Enjoying the voice, the music, the songs. Enjoying the family vibe, the community vibe. Loving the food. Loving our pair of red ales. Being fully present under a setting sun. And sharing a toast. A toast to our friend long departed but never, ever, far from our hearts or from our thoughts.

She's been gone four years now. But her life...

Is still threaded through ours.

In the past, I enthusiastically argued that none of our months are ever only about one thing. They might seem like they are, but dig into the details of our days and you'll find plenty of threads leading in all kinds of directions.

So.

None of our months.

Are every only about one thing.

Wait for it...

Except last month. Except March 2026.

That's not true, of course. The threads were still there. But our primary adventure was so indellible, so emersive, so consuming, so, well adventurous... that okay fine. I hereby declare it the month of Jordan & Dean.

Jordan & Dean?

Yup. Technically, they're my first cousins once removed. They're my cousin's kids. If I tell you, though, that they're my niece and nephew, you get it immediately. So I just tell people...

They're my niece and nephew from The Netherlands. Holland to you 'n me. 😊

Now, Jordan and Dean are 24 and 21 years old, embarking on authentic adult life like we all do by starting out young. They have questions, of course. Doubts. Concerns. Anxieties about their futures. And for March of this year they decided to set all that aside for a bona fide adventure.

Adventure? Wasn't it just vacation?

Well, it started off a vacation.

Here's a 'lil taste:

They arrived at Sea-Tac on Monday, March 2, to a proper greeting from Kimmer 'n me at the International Arrivals gate at which time we kicked off their visit to Seattle with what would turn into burgers on every day save one. They started upon their very arrival with burgers at 'Lil Woody's in Ballard and across the week managed to partake of everything from Dick's Deluxe cheeseburgers to the super gourmet burgers conjured by The Cottage in Bothell. They hit the tourists highlights: The Space Needle, MOPOP, The Seattle Aquarium, Snoqualmie Falls, The Fremont Troll, the iconic view from Queen Anne Hill, thrift shopping at Goodwill, comparison shopping at a couple Target stores and World Market, donuts courtesy Krispy Kreme, and a coupla Linzy gigs, one at Greenlake and one in Bothell. Jordan and Dean actually managed to hang out with Linzy nearly every day of their time in the Pacific Northwest where the sun hardly ever came out but the rain had no problem appearing and reappearing during their visit. 🫤 Still, a great time was had by all, culminating in a nighttime along the shores of Green Lake working out a Tik Tok lip sync/dance performance of Taylor Swift's "Ophelia", the part that goes "Ophelia Keep it one hundred On the land, the sea, the sky Pledge allegiance to your hands Your team, your vibes" The next day they were gone. And, were that a permanent truth, we would still have considered the week an absolute highlight of our year.

You'll find more photos and the story of our week together at

Click the image link. If you want... you can zero in on that Tik Tok video amidst the other photos! 😁😁😁

Here's the thing, though.

After that week and then with them gone, it wasn't actually "goodbye". It was see you Wednesday.

Wednesday?

Yup. Because that's where adventure slips into our story.

You see Jordan & Dean had in mind a Greatest Hits of the American West Coast as their template for a three week time out from their young adult lives in The Netherlands: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. And with their visit with family in Seattle complete, they boarded an Amtrak train for Oakland, nabbed a ferry across the bay to San Francisco, and continued the next leg of their travels.

We joined them after a quick flight from Paine Field Everett to San Francisco, picking up our RoadSurfer right after.

Road Surfer?

Again. Think: adventure. There would be no hotels for us. Simply a converted Sprinter Van that would perform double duty as our transportation and nightly accommodation. A modern RV. With which, in which, we adventured from San Francisco to L.A. and then all around L.A.

Now, the story of our adventures March 11 through March 20 is BIG and detailed. I'm not prepared to even summarize it at this point. What I will do, however, is hit you with some of the nouns and then photographs that serve as a bit of flavor for our travels:

BURGERS! San Francisco. Sausalito. Welcome to Morrow Dunes. San Luis Obispo. The town of Avilla at sundown. Shaved Ice. Dinosaur Caves Park. Buellton, CA. An epic Pacific Coast sunset. Malibu. The Lakers win at home against the Denver Nuggets in a nailbiter finish. Harry Potter. Universal Studios Back Lot Tour. The Live with Kelly & Mark Morning After The Oscars Show. Sleeping overnight in The Hollywood Bowl parking lot. A grocery called Erewhon. Culver City. Main Steet U.S.A.. Star Wars. The Blue Bayou Restaurant. Shooting a Tik Tok "Party in the USA" music video all over L.A.. The Santa Monica Pier. The four of us cramming ourselves into a tiny photo booth. And last but not least...

The Queen Mary.

Which is where Jordan & Dean spent a coupla nights before continuing to Las Vegas while we returned home on Friday, March 20, for a Linzy Collins gig at The Rabbit Box Theatre that night.

Okay so that wasn't really our March. But it kind of was. The time we had was so emmersively fun. It was family. It was adventure. It really was trains, planes, and automobiles. Enough to crowd out the impact of anything else we might've done that month.

Don't believe me?

The details are in the image link below:

I'm back on my seat, perched at the corner of the bar across from which Linzy is performing a three hour set at The Cottage in Bothell. I've got all kinds of fond memories of this place and its ownership who bent over backwards to keep booking music artists during the various public health rules in play during Covid.

They believe in these local musicians and it shows. 🙂

Linzy's performing tonight from 630 to 930. She joins me twice over the course of those hours on short breaks.

I actually picked her up earlier this evening, 'bout quarter past 5, and we've been talking music from the jump. We even slid into the venue's parking lot a bit early and so we just hung out, Linzy doing a kind of show 'n tell with songs that currently capture her attention, especially ones that have a vibe to inspire her Dream Patrol project which, by the way, Dream Patrol has a show coming up in June at the South Gate Roller Rink. Stay tuned for details. This is a super fun venue. 😁

Right now, I'm at the bar listening to Linzy perform "Angels" by Robbie Williams, one of my requests for the evening. Also, Linzy mentioned during the break that one of her students and their dad are here tonight which is very sweet. Students and their families always show up at these basically all ages performances and they're really the most enthusiastic people wherever they are, applauding and cheering for Linzy and coming up to talk with her or make sure they're seen by her when they have to slip out to go home.

Bedtime. You know?

Again: really, really, REALLY, sweet.

😊

Now, I'm still sitting at the bar facing away from Linzy. What I am facing, though, is the fireplace and the propane fire burning within its tiles. All that's missing is the lovely Kimmer who's down in southern California right now celebrating her cousin's son's 18th birthday.

She made him a tasty frosted cake that has absolutely zero nutritive value.

He LOVES it.

😁

Time passes and now Linzy's performing a cover of "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House, another one of my requests she solicited before the show.

The other songs that I requested?

As I mentioned earlier, "Angels" by Robbie Williams and "Vienna" by Billy Joel that Linzy points out is a tough one to perform.

Still. Two out of three ain't bad. 😀

As she finishes "Angels", she launches right into the Duran Duran enduring classic, "Ordinary World" that could easily have been one of my requests.

My daughter knows me well. ☺️

Roundiing her second break of the evening, Linzy kicks off the home stretch with "The Best", that Tina Turner classic from my early young adult days. Funny how the music always takes us back like that. 🙂

Not long after, Linzy performs a cover of "Seven Wonders" that takes me back to an early Little Lies show in White Center where the band (of which Linzy is an original member) hit a crazy high point among their shows to that point. It was hugely inspirational and I always think of that show first, not Fleetwood Mac, whenever Linzy whips out this song.

While she does include a number of Fleetwood Mac covers in her set list, Linzy also includes a song or two from her former band, Midnight High, although not tonight. Interestingly, the first time she covered a Midnigjt High tune, it was a real head-scratcher for me because I knew I knew this song. I just couldn't place it at the time because their music has such a profound eighties vibe that I thought for sure this was something I once saw on MTV or from some movie soundtrack back in the day. 🤔

On the other side of nine, it's "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis that always make me want to rise up with my lighter, only I don't smoke and I don't have a, you know, cigarette lighter. 😕

A coupla songs later, it's "Rocket Man", originally performed by Elton John, written by Bernie Taupin and Elton John. It's a deep cut from the soundtrack of me growing up as a kid as well as being one of those songs Linzy thankfully added to her set list as she grew her set list along the way. 🙂

Closing out the night, it's Linzy's reharmonized arrangement of Abba's "Take A Chance On Me" that places more emphasis on the absolute sweetness of the lyrics. After that, it's Tears for Fears and "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" that always brings the original music video front and center of my mind's eye.

Linzy signs off at 9:30, indulging some music conversation with a coupla fans. These sort of impromptu conversations are happening more frequently as her performing schedule expands.

The conversations come to a close, Linzy tallies the Pay Pal and cash tips that add up to a good night atop what The Cottage is paying her for the night. It’s an interesting truth of the venue that she's very background here among all the conversations... but she always (most of the time, anyway) walks away with the BIGGEST tips here.

No idea why that is, but...

Awesome!😁😁😁

So Linzy breaks down her gear and we take it all out to the car after saying our fare-thee-wells to the staff who are just the best bunch of human beings.☺️

Loading then getting back into the car, we're immediately thrown back into Linzy's music inspiration show 'n tell featuring her most massive inspiration, Raye.

One thing about Raye: don't listen to other music in the same setting you're listening to Raye. Listen to that other music on its own at some other time so you can feel good about how great that music is. Once you add Raye to that mix, though, it forces you to question what even is the point of that other music. It's a little bit like comparing graduate work to the work of highschoolers. Don't force the comparison and all will continue to be right in the world.

Unfortunately for me, on our way over earlier this evening, we listened to a bunch of current pop hits that are catchy... but you pretty much get what's going on within the first 30 seconds.

Not so with Raye who is relentlessly surprising through the use of key and tempo changes, genre, vocal technique, song structure, arrangement, production, all topped with a healthy dose of whimsy. You have no idea where she's going in the first 30 seconds.

And so...

And so we listened to the first handful of cuts from Raye's 2023 debut album, "My 21st Century Blues":

"Introduction"

"Oscar Winning Tears"

"Hard Out Here"

"Black Mascara" and

"Escapism"

—pausing the music every so often to point out some element of what we just heard or to riff on some idea inspired by the songwriting, arrangement, or production.

There are definitely implications for Linzy's Dream Patrol here. Maybe not direct implications but implied nevertheless: songwriting territory to be explored and writng styles to be indulged that arent usually (or ever) indulged.

Anyway...

Anyway, by the time we're through the fifth track and an impromptu discussion about alter egos and meta points of view, I'm dropping Linzy back at her place.

Where our evening started.

In the dream I'm inside at Kimmer's cousin's place in southern California (where Kimmer is right now, IRL) only it doesn't look like Kimmer's cousin's place. I just know it's his place where I'm standing in a room with a computer until I turn to leave and walk into another room that's more of a living room. Beyond that room lies another in which Kimmer and her cousin are hanging out. I have the sense that her cousin's son is in the room with me but I don't see him just now because, just now, there's a table by the wall with a row of slots to organize office supplies and knick knacks and, just now, I'm feeling kind of hungry, looking for something on which to gnosh.

By 'n by, somehow I notice a bag of chips under my chair... so I take it out from under there and slide it into one of the slots where I notice some tasty things on which to gnosh so I take one, get up from my chair to head downstairs to the rec room when I realize I just described the layout of my childhood home. So I’m standing at the door to the staircase when I realize I'm actually standing in that house. I'm standing in my childhood home. Instead of going downstairs, though, I decide to look around and so I walk into the living room where I realize it's night. The night is thick in darkness and I realize I didn't remember it being night at Kimmer's cousin's place but for sure it's nighttime here. I catch the headlights of a car making its way down the hill in front of our house. As I continue to walk around, turning back towards my parents' room and my old room, I realize that this, me being in my childhood home as if it's today, is itself a dream and that I'm really still back in Kimmer's cousin's house in southern California and I idly wonder how I'm supposed to get back there. This dream is so real being back in my childhood home and I wonder what you do when you know the reality you're experiencing is actually a dream. What do you do to make it back to the reality you know. In this moment, I'm not anxious. I'm just not sure what to do because this reality is very compelling. It really is.

It really is.

It really is.

It really is, that is, until my phone rings on my nightstand next to my bed. And no. I'm no longer in my childhood home. I'm no longer in a home in southern California. I'm in my own bed in my own home picking up the phone because Kimmer's calling me from the actual southern California and it's time to start the day.

By the way, this was the first dream within a dream that I ever remember having.

Crazy sauce.

We all have ideas about food in foreign countries. As in which foods are iconic to those places and where do I get the classic version to say I had one?

For me, for example, that would be London and fish 'n chips. For my family from Holland who just finished a three-week vacation here, that would be America... and hamburgers.

Now before they even got here nearly four weeks ago we knew they were angling for burgers. American hamburgers.

It was on their list.

The Space Needle.

The Golden Gate Bridge.

The Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

The Eiffel Tower on the Vegas Strip and...

Hamburgers.

American Hamburgers.

Of course I imagine there are plenty of candidates and nominations for THE iconic American hamburger. But that's my point: for a visitor to our country there’s really nothing to do but try 'em if for no better reason than the ones they have back home are pretty lame. So...

Which ones do they try?

Well, whichever ones they find.

For example, on Day One, Hour One of my family's visit to our fabulous West Coast, on our way back picking them up from SeaTac Airport, we swung through Ballard's 'Lil Woody's where the quality of their burgers is undeniable.

Yeah, but...

Are they classic American hamburgers?

Doesn’t matter. They're tasty as hell. As were the ones at The Cottage in Bothell, Dick's Drive-In, that one restaurant down on the Seattle waterfront, that place where we had lunch in Sausalito, Disneyland's Hungry Bear Barbecue Jamboree, various In & Out Burgers in Los Angeles, and so on.

It wasn't every day they had hamburgers, American hamburgers...

But it was pretty close to that very thing.

They even made one final stop at an In & Out on their way to the airport, for crying out loud. Mere hours before leaving the country that made those culinary treats iconic with America.

I don't know if they ever had THE most iconic American hamburger ever made...

But if they didn't, it was not for lack of trying.

This is another one of those times when I'm writing about a particular month at the very end of the following month. In this case, we just came off of a very active month with family from The Netherlands and so it's very easy to imagine that we did absolutely nothing at all in February.

Very easy.

So what did we, in fact, do in February?

Well...

We put an end to Christmas in February. February 7th, in fact, is when Kimmer finally called it by transforming our Christmas tree into a Valentine's tree.

Why?

Because we never take the tree down. We love the vibe so much. So it changes with the holidays and the seasons until the year goes round again and it's Christmas!

So.

We kept the holiday spirit going through all of January. We listened to a lot of Christmas music: my 67-song playlist of pop Christmas songs through the decades; my classic rock Christmas song playlist; the punk rock Christmas playlist I recently found...

And so on.

And so Kimmer undertook a massive de-decoration and re-organization of everything Christmas in our home until, by 'n by, she had everything packed into labeled boxes waiting patiently under incandescent light to be put away for the year.

I fully admit it's unusual for us to let that Christmas vibe go so long. I suspect it's part of the reason we felt as if these first pair of months were simply some odd continuation of the previous twelve, that somehow the old year had yet to step aside for the New Year. And yeah, absolutely, holding on to Christmas Season Thoughts and Christmas Season Memories so indelibly long is kind of different now that I think about it nearly three months done into 2026.

But, like my friend Ann likes to say, there you go and there you are.

Okay.

Christmas decorating wasn't the only thing Kimmer was up to in February. She was also doing a lot of coordinating with my first cousin once removed, Jordan, who had it in mind for she and her brother, Dean, to appear over here on the West Coast in March, adventuring for three weeks from Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles and finally to Las Vegas.

And where are they from, you ask?

The Netherlands. The Netherlands is where they're from. So Kimmer conducted a lot of research and texting and a phone call or two with Jordan to figure out what would both work for Jordan and Dean and what would also not break the bank but allow them to see and experience what they had their hearts set on.

Kimmer ended up putting together an info folder for Jordan to consider including City Pass details for Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas with maps for all four destinations and the most maps for Seattle.

Of course travel agenting was still not the full extent of Kimmer's February.

There was and is and always will be her dissertation work that"s really stsrting to kick into gear. The feedback from her professors continues to wave her efforts forward, their discussions and review so far confirming Kimmer"s premise and approach... and it's obvious that everyone connected to her work in progress wants to see this thing out in the open, out in the wild, out in the real world. Her work is starting to gain traction in her immediate academic community.

Which is my way of saying that she's well on her way to convincing her first audience that she's right. 😁😁😁

Moving on.

February included a bunch of writing for my Creativity, Neuroscience, and Perseverance blogs spanning the advantages of using chaos, the details of becoming stuck on the way to becoming unstuck, along with a few riffs on learning.

Next thing you know we're into Presidents' Day and I'm reading a letter written by Abraham Lincoln that’s posted in the 2017-2021 ARCHIVED CONTENT corner of the US Department of State website. The page is Classics of Freedom and Democracy. The letter is written to Henry L. Pierce & Others, dated April 6, 1859 and I'm reading it this day because for some reason I'm down for an examination of the abstract truths to which Americans have committed themselves and for which they've died.

Don't know what to tell you. That was just the vibe that day. 🤔

February was also a continuation of our quest at Small World Productions to complete a demo of a new show on art and place. There are definitely a lot of moving parts, definitely we're rolling through a lot of different iterations toward what we hope will be something both different and special. We're wresting with new approaches to on-cameras. We are experimenting with the Why, What, and How of our approach. Think of it as us dialing in our technical/creative process by which we choose to create. 😚

Somewhere in here, Linzy posts the poster for her March show at The Rabbit Box Theatre featuring herself, Hank Lemon, and Drew Martin for what promises to be one helluva show! 😁

February for Linzy wasn't only promotion, it was also performance. The 19th at Willows Lodge in the Fireside Lounge where Kimmer 'n I scored a bench next to the roaring fire in the fireplace facing Linzy as she not only performed covers but reharmonized songs like Abba's "Take A Chance On Me", transforming it into something slow and sweet and thoughtful. A real attention getter.

Also in the playlist, of course, are Songs Mom & Dad Love like "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles.

And yes. We absolutely can't get enough. 😊

In February, we spent time going through boxes of photographs my dad gave us to caretake. They are photographs I've never seen and neither has any of our family in The Netherlands. A few of the photos have handwritten comments on the back but most don't and my dad doesn’t have specific information on some very long, long ago, the earliest decades of his life and my mom's life. We're talking either side of World War II here. And so I started posting some of these for different family members in The Netherlands just to say hey... check this out! But really what I'm thinking about doing is creating a WhatsApp group chat where I can upload photos to see if anyone has any info, insights, or guesses.

Fingers crossed. 🙂

So.

Without doing anything fancy, that was a pretty normal month for us: our February. Still a packed experience. We're always wall to wall one way or another. It's just that months like this I've gotta dig a little to sus out the details. Next month, though... March.

Is definitely NOT gonna be a challenge.

Our New Year begins at the home of some dear friends after an evening of kids, presents, dinner, kids to bed, and conversation into the wee hours of January 1, one of those days when you go to bed and get up in the "morning"... it's still the same day. A good and lazy day. 😊

Friday the 2nd, based on a text from my boss, I swoop into my edit suite in town where my boss has left me a gift bag.

Dang.

I open the bag the next night, giving it a day's worth of being on display before revealing a lovely collection of ornament, chocolate caramels, a cool Christmas mug, and an evening at a lovely Edmonds restaurant Kimmer 'n I passed by for years and wondered about each time... and now we get the chance to partake. ☺️

Saturday, January 3 is my dad's birthday. For the occasion, Kimmer determined to make the traditional Dutch baked treat, Oliebollen, for my dad and mom. The treat is a fried ball of dough riddled with bits of apple, dates, and raisins... dusted by powdered sugar. Kimmer winds up baking it from scratch and it's such a hit that my dad goes for seconds. 😁

Because of the Christmas vibe we're maintaining, most of the month winds up feeling like a sustained space between December of 2025 and January of 2026. After all, we only decorated our home for Christmas on Christmas Eve. So we left it all up through every day of January. We continued to watch classic Christmas movies we hadn't got to in December. And we listened to various playlists of Christmas music during our evenings. In the meantime, our Christmas tree rained standing, fully decked and lighting up our living room with a few of our opened presents displayed beneath its ornamented branches.

😊

Moving through and passed the first week of 2026, it becomes clear that Kimmer's December bore incredible fruit. She achieved a breakthrough that'll propel her dissertation forward with a bit of momentum into and through January.

HUZZAH!!!!!

My efforts, of course, are more mundane. Cleaning my home office that I fully trashed during its stint as a staging and wrapping area for presents in December. Not a single surface doesn't have some kind of paper debris on it. Drawers are half open for convenience. I haven't even placed the Christmas bough with lights along the back of my counter along the wall it's so cluttery. And, oh yeah, I entered receipts from the last week of the year for our accounting.

Yeah.

Whatever.

In January, I continued and ultimately finished "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. I don't actually have sustained time for reading books and novels but I do have time in the morning while the coffee's brewing to read four or five pages. Which I do. Taking a lesson from my old grade school, along the way as I run across words, phrases, entire paragraphs that I don't fully understand... I look 'em all up so that I do understand. Even got a decent explainer or two from Google's AI.

Go figure.

Slight detour in our extended holiday month: we spent a lazy Sunday afternoon at a gym with a friend and her kids where her son was taking his boxing class with a bunch of other enthusiastic kids. They definitely all had a great time and they all definitely got one heckuva workout.

🙂

November of this year, 2026, I'm gonna pop open a note to myself from myself written in January that lays out everything I need to know about where I left off after Christmas 2025 and what, at that time, I intended for Christmas 2026. I updated the address list, for example. I already have Christmas and holiday cards for certain family and friends... so I've written down to whom each one goes. I also have some gift plans for Kimmer's Christmas 2026 morning, and so on. All the information I have so far is in a spreadsheet in which I also recorded where each Christmas element for the end of this year is including where some of the fancy boxes I picked up for Christmas 2025 gifts are being stored and what the situation is for stamps and return address labels.

😁

Now, one of the new events that appeared in our January happened because we were away with family in California during Thanksgiving Week, 2025. In fact we spent Thanksgiving itself in Death Valley, not returning home until the night of December 2. Tuesday.

For our family Thanksgiving, then, we all gathered on Saturday evening, December 6, and had such a wonderful time that we vowed to come together for Christmas just...

Not on Christmas but on Sunday, January 25, 2026.

We all actually moved through our holiday season knowing this little piece of Christmas would be waiting for us to arrive. And on Sunday, January 25, wall congregated in a living and dining room in the full throes of Christmas Day. The full meal deal: tree, lights, ornaments, bountiful presents, boughs, stockings, and my 67-song Christmas playlist playing from a Bluetooth speaker. 😁

The evening featured a lot of catching up, indulging in the potluck dinner we assembled together, opening our Christmas presents from each other, until it was time to retire to the dining room table for our White Elephant game in which we used the spinner from the game, Twister, that we keep on a bookshelf with other board games in our family room.

Our White Elephant rules then became Red for hand your gift to the person on your right, Green for hand your gift to the person on your left, Yellow for swap gifts with the person of your choice, and Blue for a sequential of swapping gifts for 15 seconds among the six of us. The person who spins and lands on Blue can take a gift from any other player. The person whose gift just got swiped can now take a gift from any other player except from the one who just swiped their gift. No take-backsies. This continues until the timer on my phone hits zero.

We had the best time, playing three rounds for gifts and, eventually money that led to a lightning round in which $31 got snatched right from under my nose in the last moment of a 15 second "steal someone else's gift" sequence of chaos. The experience was so intense we all broke into spontaneous applause. 👏👏👏

The experience was a bunch of perfect fun for all of us. In general, each of us pretty much got what we wanted. So now we're definitely looking forward to gathering to play again even if we have to devise our own holiday to do it.

😉

Which brings us to the 31st, the last day of January featuring a performance by Linzy at the Patterson Cellars Hollywood Hills Tasting Room in Woodinville. The place was packed that night and we were surprised to discover electric guitars hanging on the wall signed by various rock musicians.

The revelation of the night (after finding out they serve no Riesling here) is the 2024 Luanne Blanc Rhone White. I like the Rieslings for their sweetness... and the Luanne Blank does a good job with its fruitiness to capture a similar taste experience. 😊

Even though everyone was there for the wine tasting, this was also a great audience, attentive and applauding after each song Linzy performed. She was there from six to eight and we loved every song she performed, including a cover of "The City" by The 1975 that Linzy knows I love. She even looked my way as she settled into the opening of the song.

😊😊😊

Our January was obviously an extended December, a furthering experience of Christmas. That was both intentional and unintentional. Think of it a little as being caught up in a wave of glad tidings, comfort and joy. It all just feels so lovely. It's addictive in its own way. And I do. I do miss the pre-Christmas preparation of it: the decorating, the strategizing, the Hobby Lobbying. The juggling act of embracing a faith tradition, a cultural tradition, and a family tradition that we're stitching together on the fly. It's all of a piece in its own way that encourages a specific way of thinking through our lives on a daily basis as soon as we sneak up on Thanksgiving. We become intentionally more outward focused. We become more tuned into beauty. We return in a way to a space of a child's expectation about what's to come, what's about to happen.

And yeah. It's no wonder that we naturally hang onto as much of that as we can...

Saturday, February 7th, 2006. Kimmer's calling it. She's transforming our Christmas tree into a Valentine's tree.

Why?

Because we never take the tree down. We love the vibe so much. So it changes with the holidays and the seasons until the year goes round again and it's Christmas!

So yes. We kept the holiday spirit going through all of January. We listened to a lot of Christmas music: my 67-song playlist of pop Christmas songs through the decades; my classic rock Christmas song playlist; the punk rock Christmas playlist—

—I found online that we both.

Can't get enough of.

🤯😁😁

One of our failures this season, the most prominent one, is that we never did our Advent Calendar tradition using our calendar made from wood, painted red, with a white center background with delicately carved Christmas imagery in red adorning it. Having already reached Christmas Day, as a kind of make-up Advent, we sought to engage the calendar in reverse: the 24th on the 26th, the 23rd on the 27th, and so on.

We maybe made it to the 14th before losing track of the date and what we were trying to accomplish. I won't lie, though. I found a longer Advent reading plan for the first time and read through the 24 days from the top of December through the 24th, Christmas Eve. Not every day, of course. If I missed a day or two or three or five I'd make it all up on the day I returned to it again. I definitely absorbed the narrative this way... I just miss the treats associated with using our red Advent Calendar with the little slips of bible verses. 😕

Now, I don't remember the latest we ever left our tree decked out for Christmas. Probably not this long. In our defense, we only decked the tree (and the halls) on Christmas Eve. Literally Christmas Eve. So I don't feel bad getting a little over a month of super lovely Christmas tree vibes after that. :-)

Still. All good things do come to pass... and this year was no different as Kimmer undertook a massive de-decoration and re-organization of everything Christmas in our home. She worked on it most of the day and all through our night 'til bedtime as she listened to audiobooks for her dissertation.

By 'n by, she had everything packed into labeled boxes waiting patiently under incandescent light to be put away for the year. It's actually kind of sweet seeing them this way. They still carry their Christmas vibe about them. They also now have a kind of Macy's Day Parade feel. Not during the actual parade, mind you, but seeing them all lined up...

Waiting until the moment they can finally be on their way.

😊

Our friend Susan made an appearance from our memories again. She always does throughout the year because there are so many things that can and do trigger moments from our pasts together. This time it was a plate, believe it or not. As Kimmer was de-Christmassing our home and organizing and reorganizing, she brought some boxes into the living and dining rooms, inside one of which was this plate that neither of us can remember buying. And since Susan was such a bona-fide cat person from the first we met her, this plate seems right up her alley. We don't think it's one of her original plates. We think it's a product of one of her visits to Value Village, perhaps with one of the girls... not sure. We are pretty sure that this is something that would've come into her possession while she was living just up the street from us. And, of course, all the black cats across the plate remind us of our very own black cat, Quarter The Grumpy. ;-)

Our experience of Christmas, Christmastime, the Holiday season... is heavy on memories. No question. Sort of an E) All of the above proposition in our experience of these days so filled with faith and tradition. Our tree, for example, when decked out for Christmas, is everything all at once.

We adorn it with both traditional and personal ornaments. We fashion it with our own memories, the people in our lives who are important to us. And we drape it with the Christmas decorations that belonged to some who are no longer with us. For example, ornaments that once belonged to Kimmer's aunt Jacquie and uncle Dave, ornaments that adorned their tree, once upon a time.

This isn't an intentional tradition of ours. Like many of our traditions, this one sort of happened this way.

But I am pretty sure we'll add more such ornaments as the seasons come and go.

So what happened is that we were away with family in California during Thanksgiving Week, 2025. In fact we spent Thanksgiving itself in Death Valley, not returning home until the night of December 2. Tuesday.

For our family Thanksgiving, then, in our own homestead, we all gathered on Saturday evening, December 6, and had such a wonderful time that we vowed to come together for Christmas just...

Not on Christmas.

When then?

That would be Sunday, January 25, 2026.

We all actually moved through our holiday season knowing this little piece of Christmas would be waiting for us to arrive. And yesterday...

We arrived.

☺️

Now, what works best for us all is potluck. Everyone brings a drink of their choice and a menu item of their choice. And for our January 25, 2026 Christmas gathering, we had on hand a lovely bottle of Rosé, a sixer of Elysian beer, a bottle of Martinelli's apple cider, some non-alcoholic beer, and a coupla bottles of flavored seltzer water. Our menu items included two full plates of vegan stroganoff featuring mushrooms and veggies spiced just so; a platter of roasted veggies featuring zucchini, carrots, and a variety of red, purple, and brown potatoes cooked in our double oven; street tacos and rice; vegan Snickerdoodles; Kimmer's vegan Snickerdoodles; and Kimmer's vegan chocolate 'n raisin chunks.

I won't lie. After a full day of prep for the evening, the food and drink that showed up was desperately welcome.

The prep, by the way, involved cooking across the day by Kimmer. There was cleaning and getting the house in order for guests by the both of us. Kimmer already scored all the presents for the evening and so laid them out on our dinner table with some matched to gift bags she chose. She then explained to me for what purpose each gift was intended, personal gift or white elephant, and so I set off to bagging, packing, wrapping, tagging each gift, and placing each one either under the tree or a little bit off to the side.

Coming up on 530, Kimmer sent me out for some last-minute shopping: a coupla gift cards and some veggie items. By the time I returned, Kimmer was in the shower, so I bagged the gift cards and started affixing bows with Scotch tape to all the boxed gifts.

I was actually on the floor, at the base of our Christmas tree doing the bow thing when Linzy 'n Reuben showed up. I heard them, of course, 'cause there are sleigh bells hanging from the interior handle of our front door. Even were that not the case, the audible exclamation Linzy let out upon seeing our living room would've given them away. So from my spot on the floor, I ask what the fuss is about. Turns out seeing a living room in the full throes of Christmas Day is actually pretty surprising. The full meal deal: tree, lights, ornaments, bountiful presents, boughs, stockings, and my 67-song Christmas playlist. 😁

A little later, Rachel 'n Chris descend upon us also with gifts and food and drink. And like that the house is alive with conversation in the living room, at the dining room table, and in the kitchen. Conversation even crosses back 'n forth between the living room and kitchen through the pass-through.

In-between all the conversating, Kimmer 'n I receive some very thoughtful, belated birthday cards and a Christmas card inside all of which are handwritten and touching thoughts from everyone here. Kimmer's birthday card is especially moving because it's completely hand-made and features select photographs from 2008-2015: sweet and fun mother 'n daughter memories.

By 'n by, it's time for The Question.

Presents first?

Or food first?

For most of us, the answer's obvious: presents!!!!!

One of us, however, is pretty much starving so we decide to dip our palates into the stroganoff, roasted veggies, and snickerdoodles that are already conveniently set up on kitchen counters.

Afterward, we gather around our coffee table in the living room to exchange personal gifts.

I won't go through the entire inventory, but I will say that the most impressive unwrapping is the two Demi Lovato concert tickets for her May performance at Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena. Turns out the girls are going!

Trust me: a massive amount of excitement ensued. Followed by negotiations over who would be buying drinks and who would be buying merch.

The tickets, by the way, well... in reality the tickets exist in the ticket app. These tickets were fashioned in Canva and printed specifically for this occasion.

Dang. 🤯

As for Kimmer 'n I, Kimmer scored Luna Lovegood glasses, a Gryffindor mug, and an Eyeris 3 eye relaxation/massage device with heat controls and pressure controls. As for me, I got a Hufflepuff mug and a yellow Hufflepuff hoodie, large. 😁

And then the icing on the cake: a Harry Potter Lego kit of Luna Lovegood's house that includes light bricks. My oh my how far we've come from my basic Lego pieces that weren't intended for anything but random assembly. 🤔

Around 830, we retire to the dining room table for our White Elephant game in which we use the spinner from the game, Twister, that we keep on a bookshelf with other board games in our family room. I was actually back there looking for some dice when I came across Twister with its large spinner to select between Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue. Four choices: perfect! The White Elephant rules then became Red for hand your gift to the person on your right, Green for hand your gift to the person on your left, Yellow for swap gifts with the person of your choice, and Blue for a sequence of swapping gifts for 15 seconds among the six of us. The person who spins and lands on Blue can take a gift from any other player. The person whose gift just got swiped can now take a gift from any other player except from the one who just swiped their gift. No take-backsies. This continues until the timer on my phone hits zero.

The rules are pretty straight forward until you get to Blue and people forget the gift swiping happens in sequence... not all at once. So we had to restart a coupla times once the chaos of everyone trying to swipe everyone else's gifts at the same time stopped being the collective action whenever the spinner turned up Blue.

After that, though, it was all good although the gift swiping was slow to start. Fifteen seconds, after all, isn't a lot of time and, when you use some of that time to think about which gift you wanna steal... that time becomes shorter still.

One thing we all learned with these rules, though, is that when a gift arrives in your hands that you wanna keep... running out the clock is a solid move. Just make no choice at all while the clock ticks down to zero.

Genius!

Our first game of White Elephant featured a gift provided by each of us: six gifts total that turned out to be a plant, a Grocery Outlet gift card, the Power Hungry Pets strategy card game from the makers of Exploding Kittens, an AMC movie gift card, a candle in the shape of a frog, and a mini-speaker & mini-battery bank. I started off the game spinning the Twister dial and then we went around the table, finishing with Kimmer.

Now when Kimmer was done, the question arose whether we wanted to go 'round the table again. At this point, I informed everyone that there were two further games awaiting them with two sets of six gifts provided by us. So the table immediately wanted to kick start Game 2 into action.

By the way, I scored the Grocery Outlet gift card in Game 1 while Kimmer scored the 'lil plant that she very much wanted.

We started Game 2 with each person choosing a gift to unwrap and then we all unwrapped our gifts that revealed themselves to be a small bottle of Jack Daniels, a mesh bag of chocolate coins, a narrow camping backpack for carrying drinks, a Friends trivia game, The Game of Things board game, and four packages of sugar-light candies.

This time around, the table elected to go 'round twice. I wound up with the mesh bag of chocolate coins, Kimmer wound up with the bottle of Jack Daniels, the person who really wanted the Friends trivia game wound up with the Friends trivia game, and the person who really wanted the camping backpack for carrying drinks wound up with the camping backpack for carrying drinks.

Cool how that all worked out. 😁😁😁

Which brings us to Game 3, another twice-around-the-table game.

Now, this game was an experiment for us 'cause we've never run it this way as, to date, we've only played with kids. This time around, we included a couple standard White Elephant gifts, two outdoor Christmas light necklaces + a Starbucks gift card... and a Star Wars branded Grogu plastic stackable snack food storage jar with three sections.

Now the change-up:

A set of five dice and a bag with $5 in quarters.

$7.50 in quarters.

$21 arranged in such a way as to initially look like $1.

$31 also arranged to initially look like $1.

So that's $64.50 on the table for Game 3.

The game moved a little faster, as you might expect, especially on the swipe colors, Yellow and Blue. Blue swipes were the fastest of the night, the $31 leaving my possession in the last second of a 15 second swipe sequence involving I think six swipes. Literally right out from under my nose at the last possible moment. The experience was so intense we all broke into spontaneous applause on the heels of that swipe. 👏👏👏

Me, I wound up with the light necklaces and Starbucks card but gave 'em up 'cause Rachel loved them more than I. I was just in it for the Starbucks card that I'll spend at our local Safeway. Kimmer wound up with the $5 in quarters that she also gave up after the game. And the person who previously scored the camping backpack for carrying drinks scored the Grogu plastic stackable snack food storage jar with three sections, which they already know how they're gonna use it.

Gotta say, Game 3 was a bunch of perfect fun for all of us. In general, we all pretty much got what we wanted. So now we're definitely looking forward to gathering to play again even if we have to devise our own holiday to do it.

By the time we were done with the games, the time was just brushing passed 930, time for Linzy 'n Reuben (and their dog, Teddy) to hit the road. After another half hour or so of conversation amongst the rest of us, hugs and fare-thee-wells are exchanged at which point Kimmer sends Rachel 'n Chris away with some of her Snickerdoodles, chocolate/raisin chunks, and the rice we never got around to eating. We also never got around to eating the tacos Kimmer prepped. We also never got around to the pumpkin creme desserts she made as well. They will all make perfectly lovely meals and desserts across our week. We're 100% looking forward to partaking in these delights.

☺️

After everyone's away, Kimmer's doing the dishes, mostly glasses and cookware as we otherwise used holiday paper plates. As for me, I launched right into cleaning and organizing and clearing out the paper destruction strewn all about our living room and dining room floors. That'd be wrapping paper, paper tissue, cardboard boxes (mostly Amazon), bows, stuffing, and garbage.

It was a bit of a tedium but it was all done by quarter passed 11 while Kimmer relaxed on our couch under the warmth of a heating blanket and the company of both our cats.

After a bit of fuss with my laptop, we finished off our night (starting at midnight) with Season 4, episode 1 of the BBC show, Ghosts, the episode titled "Happy Holiday".

And with that...

Our January 25 Christmas came to a close.

😁

HOLIDAY REPORT

This is pretty much a post-Christmas report in which we return to work briefly then snap back into Christmastime mode with friends on New Year's Eve with whom we usually spend Christmas Eve. This year, then, we postpone our Christmas Eve with them 'til New Year's Eve. Which means...

Presents.

So on the day I worked and returned early by 5:00 at which point I'm wrapping the presents Kimmer acquired for our friends while she prepares our side of the potluck, taking us to 6:30 at which point we're on our way to our friend's house for a wonderfully lovely evening with kids, without kids, with opening and enjoying presents, with dinner and drinks and adult conversation until—

Okay what we said between ourselves was that maybe we'd leave before midnight. We've seen a bazillion of these, after all. And then when we were all together we said right after midnight 'cause that's late enough to be out at night. And then what happened is that we busted passed midnight, passed 1AM, calling it a "night" at 2 o'clock in the morning.

New Year's Day morning.

The "Eve" part of our experience, by the way, was awesome because of our friends. The actual festivities on the living room monitor, KING 5's coverage, was lame due to weather. There was obviously an astonishing show of lights and fireworks to be experienced... unfortunately for everyone—viewers, the broadcast company, and the crew responsible for the design and presentation of this event—the Space Needle was embraced by a thick layer of fog, a kind of atmospheric gauze to obscure and blur the lights.

It was sad... but still we were with great friends and that's all that matters. ☺️

So 2AM we leave, 2:30 we're home, 3:30 in bed ready to embrace a good morning's sleep, up by 10:00 the very same morning.

Dang.

Continuing my new tradition of reading A Christmas Carol first thing in the morning, three to four pages at a time, I immerse myself in the passage where the Ghost of Christmas Past accuses Scrooge of suppressing the ghost with the cap upon its head.

Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered. “What!” exclaimed the Ghost, “would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!”

In the meantime, our Christmas tree still lights up our living room with a few of our opened presents displayed beneath its ornamented branches. Its presence is a lovely comfort even as former revelers begin to de-Christmas their homes. Our friends with whom we spent New Year's Eve, for example, have it on their schedule: Saturday. January 3. Take down Christmas.

🙁

We never really embark on our day, truth be told. New Year's Day. It's a lazy day across which we more or less slide toward late afternoon, the sun already down, where Kimmer has a spread of meats and cheeses and fruits and veggies from which we graze throughout the evening.

By the way, after comparing notes, it seems like everyone we know, young or old, spent their New Year's Eves as if they were old. Everyone seemed to just want a quiet night with friends, not a crazy night outside partying. 🤔🤔🤔

As we move forward from the first day of the new year, it becomes more obvious that Kimmer's December bore incredible fruit. She achieved a breakthrough that'll propel her dissertation forward with a bit of momentum.

HUZZAH!!!!!

My efforts, of course, are more mundane. Cleaning my home office that I fully trashed during its stint as a staging and wrapping area for presents in December. Not a surface doesn't have some kind of paper debris on it. Drawers are half open for convenience. I haven't even placed Christmas bough with lights along the back of my counter along the wall it's so cluttery.

And, oh yeah, I entered receipts from the last week of the year for our accounting.

Whatever.

Saturday, January 3 is my dad's birthday. For the occasion, Kimmer determines to make the traditional Dutch baked treat, oliebollen, from a box mix we picked up in Holland when we visited at the top of 2024.

Unfortunately, the box mix includes yeast. It includes yeast that, at this point, is two years old. This is an insight, by the way, that reveales itself just as soon as the first box turns out not so much baked goods but petrified goods.

Oof.

Not fluffy and light tasty baked treats but things you can actually throw at other people that will physically hurt them.

Not good.

Also... inedible.

Hmmmmm.

So we did have another box of oliebollen mix and Kimmer had another plan which was to add fresh yeast to the box mix.

This workaround worked better... but it was not the home run Kimmer was looking for given that she was making a traditional New Year's Dutch treat for actual, you know, Dutch people.

From scratch, then. Kimmer pivoted to making oliebollen from scratch from an online recipe.

I'm sure this isn't the recipe Kimmer used, but you get the gist. It's basically a deep-fried ball of dough that's accessorized in various ways. My dad, for example, used raisins and currants. Some people use apples. I think Kimmer used craisins, dates, oranges, figs, and dried cherries.

And so...

How'd they turn out?

Lemme judge that for you by the only metric that makes sense: my parents asked for seconds. They wanted more. My dad also hinted that the tin of nine oliebollen Kimmer was leaving with he and my mom would barely last a day.

Huzzah!

SUCCESS!!!!

And yeah. We had the best time hanging out with my folks for a couple of hours of afternoon. The oliebollen were a complete hit, as I described. Kimmer also crafted a lovely meal to precede it. A wonderful tray of tropical fruits. Tasty baked sliced red potatoes in butter. And meatballs made from beef and made from chicken, spiced exquisitely.

☺️

Now, we're still in the Christmas season so the decorations are still up, the tree is up, the music's still Christmastime, and the Christmas movies and specials are still rollin'.

Like, "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" that we watched later that evening. Like "The Santa Claus 2" we watched across the week. Like "The Santa Claus 3" we started by the end of the week.

The evening was also about unveiling the gift bag left for me in my edit suite containing a lovely collection of ornament, chocolate caramels, a cool Christmas mug, and an evening at a restaurant Kimmer 'n I passed by for years and wondered about each time... and now we get the chance to partake. ☺️

The day after my dad's birthday, Sunday, didn't have as much holiday in it... but it did represent my first swing at preparing my notes for Future Dave.

Notes?

Future Dave?

Okay. Less than a year from now I'm gonna be faced with the efforts I started for the Christmas season last Christmas. By the end of November, I'm guessing.

So.

November of this year, 2026, I'm gonna pop open a note to myself from myself that lays out the updated address list, the Christmas and holiday cards I already have and to whom each one goes, the gift plans I have for Kimmer's Christmas 2026 morning, and so on. Right now, all the information I have is in a spreadsheet in which I also recorded where each Christmas element for the end of this year is. Pretty much right now everything I have is on the floor in front of the couch and next to the storage ottoman. Everything I have right now for next Christmas including the stamps I have left is on the floor right there.

Okay so Monday morning, the 5th, I started a new habit: look up on my phone what I don't understand. It's a move I remember from jr. high school (probably) where we'd do vocabulary lists. In this case, the vocabulary in question is found in the pages of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" in which, yes, there are words I don't understand, there are phrases I don't understand, and there are sentences with enough grammatical and structural complexity that I have to go back to the beginning of a sentence or paragraph and trace my way forward through it, keeping track of who or what is being refered to later in the same sentence.

By the way, the Google AI is very good at explaining whichever sentence or even a complete passage I feed it from the book.

Amazing!

December was a remarkable combination of Christmastime and the stress of doctoral testing.

If that doesn't sound exactly festive, all I can tell you is that it was festive and it was stressful in equal measure. You see, the way the planets aligned this year is that Kimmer's doctoral program installed a great big gate into the second week of December: in order to enter through the gate, in order to move forward in her program, she was required to undergo ten hours of written exam—in Kimmer's case split into two days of five hour writing sessions each day—followed the next week by one session of answering questions from one of her professors about what she'd written.

To be clear, you don't get to continue forward in the program if you don't pass with an 80%. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200 dollars.

Atop the requirement of demonstrating mastery of cumulative course content—every course from the beginning—students are also required to complete and turn in their dissertation proposal, a twenty-something page writing process that involves feedback from professors along the way as well as triggering the search for professors to form each student's dissertation committee.

Dissertation committee?

Near as I can tell, a group of faculty members who shepherd the doctoral candidate's dissertation work in progress. Every last piece of it. They assist with broader perspectives and specialized knowledge as well as assess all aspects of the work in progress from conception through research through writing to the final in-person defense of their work before the committee. The work will not see the light of day ever unless approved by the committee, assuring both its quality and originality.

So yeah. Pressure.

🤯

Of all the monthly reviews I put together, December contains the most documented experiences. If not, then it's certainly up there. For example, this year I directed my overall writing efforts beyond The Dave And Kimmer Show and The Profession of Creativity. I expanded into three new avenues: My Brain on Creativity, Very Angry? Count to 100., and, most recently, Wiring & Wondering. I actually have a lot written for each of these new blogs that haven't been posted yet and yet...

And yet.

And yet I didn't post any of it in December. I posted about our December experiences in December. So there's a lot of detail in there.

Here's a quick trip around the bases for the month, though:

December 1 finds us in Las Vegas at the end of our Death Valley Road Surfer RV camping adventure with Kimmer's cousin and his son. We were there from Tuesday, November 25, to Saturday, November 29, at which point we took up residence in a lovely hotel suite off the Strip in Las Vegas where we stayed until the end of day, Tuesday, December 2.

Being in Las Vegas at the top of December had the natural consequence of throwing us deep into the Christmas Season because that's what's up.

December 6, the Saturday after we returned from our Death Valley/Las Vegas adventure, we gathered at our home with our kids and their partners for our family Thanksgiving since we weren't in town on the day. Kimmer's turkey was a masterpiece of tender meat nearly falling off the bone and everyone else contributed their own creations for an evening that finished off with each of us writing encouragements for each other, each of us now in possession of an envelope containing those personal encouragements. 😊

Our postponed Thanksgiving dinner went over so well that we already settled on a postponed Christmas dinner at the end of January, another potluck that this time will include a gamified White Elephant event.

Some photos from the next few days...

On Tuesday, December 16, I swung by the edit suite I use at UW Video to pick up a coupla tasty items left there for me for Christmas:

The one on the left wound up being loose leaf teas branded according to the Hogwarts School of Magic student houses: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw.

Wednesday, December 17, I trekked up to Mt. Pleasant Cemetary atop Queen Ann Hill to pay my yearly respects to my old neighborhood bible school teacher, Mrs. Eleanor West, who's been gone for thirty years.

Friday, December 19, it's over to Bellevue Square to hang out with Mike, Norb, and Derek. I worked with these guys at the start of my career and we've all managed to land a long, long way from those days of old and yet... still interestingly close as well. :-)

Sunday, December 21, I started the week by writing out a general Christmas wish to anyone who randomly runs across it.

It's actually the tail end of an effort that consumed the last week of November whilst in the desert... along with every day of December until the week of Christmas. During all these weeks, I spent time conjuring our two-pager of a Christmas letter that does its best to encapsulate the entirety of our 2025. I wrote to all our friends to whom we sent Christmas cards and letters. I spent pretty much the most time I spend thinking about our family and then thinking about our friends, one by one. Which is maybe the best thing about the day to day of the season other than the iconic music.

The rest of the year, a week and change, there was my pre-birthday, the day before my birthday, on which we watched Goodbye, June at the Crest Theater. There was my birthday on which Kimmer 'n I had lunch at the Bellevue Square Cactus restaurant then later dinner with Linzy at Rosita's in Green Lake and then a Kimmer conjured birthday cake at Linzy's place. Then there was Christmas Eve on which...

Okay, that was a busy day during which we had to punt in order to preserve our sanity. Lemme just say we ended well. :-)

There was Christmas Day on which Linzy joined us at The Alderwood 16 for Song, Sung Blue and then re-joined us at the house for one of the loveliest Christmas's we spent together ever.

And then the cherry on top?

New Year's Eve with dear friends and their children. Just a great night together that organically took us all the way to 2AM New Year's morning.

Didn't get to bed 'til 330AM.

Definitely slept in, so...

Happy New Year!!!!!

What I appreciate about December...

What I appreciate about readying myself for Christmas, is that it's the time of year I think the most. I consider. I reflect.

In order to write a two-pager about our year, I have to actually consider what happened during the year. I have to measure what was significant, what was most significant both in the moment but also from a larger perspective, from a distance. It's a process during which I'm reintroduced to the year we experienced, to the details of it because I write down the highlights of each month at the end of each month. And sometimes through the days and months that follow, those details either slip my mind or are eclipsed by other things that happened in our life. So it is that I might read about our life as if it were someone else's life.

For better or for worse, the days that bear us through Thanksgiving and the month of December represents the one time we take a look at our life, our family's life, from 10,000 feet.

The same time of year also represents

the one time we spend thinking about other people the most. Friends for sure. Everyone who's on our Christmas card list because I write something to each one that's specific to each one. And while I'm doing that, I'm thinking about them and only them. And when I'm reading their Christmas cards and letters to us...

Same deal.

Them. And only them.

And that's unique to December, I hate to say.

It's also a big piece of what makes the month, what makes the days, what makes the experience... special.

December also seems to be fashioned with the largest number of triggers.

Triggers?

Any number of things that conjure memories of specific people from our lives. There are a ton of triggers that evoke our friend, Susan, for example, whether it's a food thing or a clothes thing or a movie thing or a book thing. There are ornaments hanging from our tree that used to belong to Kimmer's Aunt Jacquie and Uncle Dave. Those ornaments are a straight-up Jacquie thing, though. And those are big memories.

Back to food: the subject of pies came up and triggered Kimmer's memories of her dad taking her along to get his favorite banana cream pie from Marysville. Once all the way out there, of course, further adventure would ensue. ☺️

And then last night.

Last night I pulled up the Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown! soundtrack on my phone and, because Kimmer'd been listening to it most of her day, pivoted randomly to something we hadn't played yet this season that was once a musical staple of the season: the album, December, by Kenny Loggins that's so incredibly atmospheric... it has this mysterious way of capturing the magic of Christmastime.

Now, I pulled that up on YouTube but the album we actually own is on CD. Not our CD. It's the CD that used to belong to our friend, Scott, from whom we either borrowed it and forgot to return it... or we simply straight up stole it. Either way, Scott was the one who introduced us to the album, an act for which we will forever be grateful and, because of that, an album that's irrevocably tied to our friend.

Who we miss, still.

December is also the only month

from which I send messages to Future Me. Oh sure, I've done that before for Professional Future Me the editor. Those messages, however, tend to only travel a few months into the future. In this case, I'm sending messages nearly a full year into the future. At least 11 months. To be opened at such point in 2026 as I want that Me to start wrapping his head around our Christmastime efforts.

Which efforts?

Well, any ideas I have now for next year's Kimmer presents. Also, after Christmas Day this year, I actually bought some Christmas cards intended for specific friends during next year's round of cards. There's some updating of addresses to do. A documenting of how long it took our Christmas wishes to reach The Netherlands (7-10 days). There are things that played out very well this year that we should consider next year. A bit of a heads-up to Future Me.

And so on.

I don't want to reinvent the wheel, is all I'm saying. I wanna give Future Me the information I have right now but will inevitably forget 11 or 12 months from now without a reminder. Now, the reminder might come in the form of a spreadsheet or in a text document, I'll have to figure that out. Just something to allow me to seamlessly pick up from where I am right now.

Also, note to self:

Leave it somewhere Future Me can easily find it on the first try.

👌

And then, finally.

I don't remember if my family did this but once we open all our presents, Kimmer 'n I arrange them beneath our Christmas tree and leave them there until we enter the new year. We also leave the stockings hanging above our fireplace to remain hanging there, although if there were treats in either... they're long gone by now. 😉 Of course if there's warm clothes anywhere in our collections, they're inevitably pressed into immediate service especially on these cold winter days. Otherwise, our gifts to each other remain on display for the week following Christmas Day.

It's the last of our Christmas traditions, sort of hitting pause at the tail end of Christmas Day to maintain what that holiday breathes into our lives be it music or message or experience. It's our own little way of not pivoting, not moving on just as soon as the clock strikes 12AM on December 26th.

As it is, there are threads remaining from our Christmas season that will flow into the new year. There really isn't an end and a beginning we're experiencing. At most it's a continuation of one chapter into the next chapter and then the next chapter and then the next. And some chapters simply straddle what's meant to be an end and a beginning. They show up with their own centers of gravity and time and do what they do regardless of our insistence on properly managed markers in Time.

For now, then, it's not farewell, it's not goodbye. It's Well Done getting this far. And if it neither feels Well nor Done, that's okay.

Tomorrow's another shot at executing our own pivots.

Same as every other day of the year.

Onward!

We are officially leaving 2025 carrying less weight than we did when we entered it. Like 40 pounds less, speaking for myself.

That wasn't a plan, by the way. It was of necessity because halfway through the year we both got a nasty case of mold exposure that could only be treated successfully with radical dietary and nutritional changes devised by Kimmer and augmented by the Mukilteo Natural Health Clinic. As in no sugar, no gluten. Completely new daily menu that's waaaaay more fruits and vegetables. Nutritional supplements. And a nearly complete absence of processed foods.

Ouch.

Because sugar, gluten, processed foods?

That was my dietary jam and now it's not. Which, as it turns out, makes a MASSIVE difference. As in 40 pounds of difference (speaking for myself).

Again, this was not a weight loss plan. Weight loss just happens to be a byproduct of the successful and ongoing treatment to mold toxicity. And mold toxicity? As bad as it sounds. Completely worth it to give up whatever I had to give up so as to avoid it. Not kidding about that. Seriously not kidding.

So how does it feel? This new weight. How does it feel?

I don't know. I'm four to five sizes down from where I was earlier this year. So I've now got a different wardrobe.

And yes. That does feel different.

I think what's also a factor is that around the same time as the mold toxicity hit I started appointments with a chiropractor at Shepherd Family Chiropractic along South Lake Union for a back injury. And I've continued those appointments ever since starting with three a week and progressing with two a week, one a week, and now once every two weeks with progress testing between each change in number of visits.

So yeah.

Between the work to my body and what I'm putting in my body nowadays, I do feel better than I did with my cranky bones and the cognitive mayhem played by the mold exposure.

Feeling all kinds of thankful as we exit stage left outta 2025 and into the new year.

On the day after Christmas...

We found ourselves still in the glow of Christmastime whilst the world around us seemingly skipped forward to Valentine's Day.

Oof.

I'm not sure if that's happened before and I simply didn't notice. Usually this last week of the year's about moving Christmas product that's still on the shelves. This last week of the year is about appreciating the gifts we just received. This last week of the year is kind of a pause in our timeline.

Instead, our experience is being replaced (if it hasn't been already in the final shopping days before Christmas)... Our Christmastime experience is being actively replaced by Valentine's Day product. I even watched as employees removed Christmas cards from the racks and replaced them with Valentine's Day cards. Right there in front of me.

Of course we're used to the fact that all Christmas music everywhere comes to a screeching end as soon as Christmas Day's over. Like 12:01AM, December 26.

Who am I kidding, though? We still remark on it. "Complain", if you will. In response, we allow our Christmas playlists to soundtrack our home passed the official start of the New Year.

So there. ☺️

Because we were late...

To the decorating of our home for the holidays (Christmas Eve was our starting gun, basically), we're allowing the season within our walls to continue beyond our usual habits. We started late. We'll end late. We continue to listen to Christmas and Advent messages. We're revisiting the readings of our red, wooden, handcrafted Advent calendar with its tiny hinged doors to each day of the season. We'll continue to wrestle with this time of year "because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices." (Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

Especially as the outdoor temperatures continue to fall.

So December 26...

Boxing Day to the Brits. Now we're in cleanup mode and we're also in a bit of work mode. In the evening, we finish A Muppet Christmas Carol from The Ghost of Christmas Present ("Wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas") to film credits. Later that night, we bring our day to a meaningful close with Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown! because that's a certified must for every Christmastime. ☺️

I also begin a new tradition for myself, perhaps more of a workaround. You see it's my intention, come each December, to read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Now, I don't put a strict deadline on that effort but it is sort of implied by the day of Christmas since that is the focus of Dickens's story.

So what happens when I don't finish the book by then?

Hmmmmm. 🤔🤔🤔

Usually what happens is that, if I've started the book but haven't finished it, I don't finish it. If I never started the book and still haven't started by Christmas, I never start. And during those years where I start the book and finish it before Christmas? HUZZAH! I did it!!!!!

This year, my workaround (since I never got started on the book before Christmas)... my workaround is to pick away at the book starting the day after Christmas. Which is what I did. I read the first three pages of the book on the morning of the 26th and, on the morning of the 27th, I read another three pages.

Why three pages? Or even four pages?

Because it's what I have time for very first thing in the morning while I'm making coffee for Kimmer. It's quiet in the dining room. I have no problem focusing. I'm in no rush. Completely in the story. And that's what matters. Being completely in the story even if it's for such short pieces of it. And so, three or four pages at a time, more if the opportunity presents, I will finish the book which is the point. The deadline isn't the point. Immersing myself in the world and the story crafted by Dickens is very much the point.

So yeah. A new tradition. 🙂

Speaking of Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol...

On Saturday the 27th and Sunday the 28th, we watched The Man Who Invented Christmas, the movie about the writing of this most famous story, A Christmas Carol.

December 27th is also the first day our Christmas song bubble was burst when we turned on the car radio only to hear Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" pumping through the speakers. I was surprised on two counts because 1) I thought the station to which we'd been tuned this whole time was a Christian radio station playing Christmas classics and 2) we had just been listening to Christmas music.

Turns out Warm 106.9 isn't a Christian radio station. But it sure does play the best Christmas music. 😊

Later that evening around 6:00 p.m., I'm at Hobby Lobby to see if there are any Christmas cards or maybe ornaments on deep discount because we're passed Christmas now... only to discover that the entire store is so over Christmas. It had already pivoted to Valentine's Day. Seriously. Rows that were formerly occupied by Christmas product was now fully occupied by Valentine's Day ware. So now I'm walking around the store feeling kind of sad at the absence of Christmastime at Hobby Lobby. As if they abandoned it or something. After a while, though, I realize how, really, this was a great season of waiting, of preparing, of planning and plotting. There were enough moving parts to it that, for example, I used a spreadsheet to track every present I bought for Kimmer. I had fields for specific items, where they were to be acquired, and where I had hidden them since they were not all hidden in the same place or even all at the house. Some presents, maybe more than half, were stored in the edit suite at which I work most of the time.

Beyond the presents, I enjoyed the entire process from beginning to end of finding Christmas cards for all our friends and family and writing to each person who receives a card from us. I even enjoyed the process of wrangling the entirety of our year onto a two-pager, front and back.

Of course I enjoyed reading everyone else's Christmas cards as well as simply enjoying the family times we conjured in the week leading up to my birthday, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day. In fact, I enjoyed it all so much that I'm seriously thinking there needs to be some kind of template that will allow us to have the same lovely and peaceful and fun experience again next year.

That's not really likely, though, because part of our Christmas experience is adjusting the experience we have by choosing to do less. By choosing to prioritize relationships.

By choosing to prioritize peace and reflection.

At the end of Saturday, the 27th...

I'm at Grocery Outlet doing some post-Christmas grocery shopping when, from the overhead speakers, drifting down to me I hear the song "Pure Imagination" from the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and I thought to myself how how lovely that moment was even if the song's not strictly a Christmas song it's still such a perfectly lovely song. It definitely captures something truthful about Christmastime. Which was really nice. Plus, I also found Christmas Cards on sale that are perfect for certain friends of ours... next year.

On Sunday the 28th...

Whatever elation I felt about Christmastime was revoked a little as a new round of shopping exposed me once again to how Valentine's Day the world is now. Valentine's Day, 2026. It's not even the new year, for crying out loud.

I'm at that Dollar Tree next to Trader Joe's where I'm feeling kind of bummed about the Valentine's Day I see everywhere... until I spy Christmas cards on an end cap. Upon closer inspection, however, I realize how they're all for holding money intended as a Christmas gift. Around the corner to the left, however, I hit the mother load: two racks of Christmas cards awaiting retirement. At this point, it's very possible that I have the additional cards I'm going to need for next year's round of Christmas wishes.